Last Monday I talked a little bit about the Fall Games Auction at Games Plus in Mount Prospect, Illinois. I compared it to Paris Fashion Week because, much like a fashion show, it’s an opportunity to see everything new all in one place. And not really in a leisurely, browsing-in-a-bookstore fashion, either. While you’re gawking at a fabulous fantasy game you never even knew existed, people all around you are bidding in a frenzy, intent on making sure you never…
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Six months ago, I attended the Spring Games Auction at Games Plus in Mount Prospect, Illinois, the premiere auction in the country for serious game collectors. Last Friday, I was checking the calendar. They occur every six months, which meant the next one was… holy cats! Saturday morning. I packed up my rental car the next morning and headed out, after making a blood oath to my wife Alice that I would be fiscally responsible this year. Or at least…
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Dark City Games programmed adventures are compatible with Metagaming’s legendary The Fantasy Trip role-playing system. No Game Master? No problem. All Dark City Games are complete fantasy adventures for group or solitaire play. They include an adventure book, rules, pieces and a fold-out mapboard, and are compatible with other role-playing systems such as GURPS(TM) and The Fantasy Trip(TM). Dark City Games fantasy adventures are part of their Legends of the Ancient World series. You can find more information on their…
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For a very limited time, we’re offering a selection of Dark City Games for just $2.95 to new subscribers of Black Gate magazine. That’s $10 off the regular price! Dark City Games are complete fantasy role playing adventures, perfectly suited for solitaire play or an evening’s entertainment for up to four players. They’re easy to learn and fast to play, even if you’ve never tried a role playing game. Available titles include The Crown of Kings, Gates to the Underworld,…
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The Bitter Reach by Free League, an expansion for the Forbidden Lands RPG Last year at the Spring 2019 Games Plus Auction (when it was still legal to go to such things), I was supposed to be saving all my pennies for auction bargains. But before I even reached my seat, a new games on the shelves caught my eye: Forbidden Lands, a boxed RPG developed by Swedish development house Free League, and distributed in the US by Modiphius. Here’s what I said…
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On Saturday March 7th, as Illinois was just starting to wake up to the severity of what would soon be a full-blown coronavirus pandemic, I joined about 150 other local gamers in a tightly packed back room in Mount Prospect for the 2020 Spring Games Plus Auction. Looking back, it was probably a dumb thing to do. But although I didn’t know it then, it was the last time I’d be able to walk through the doors of a games…
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While I was at the Spring 2019 Games Plus Auction, I took the time to shop around in the New Arrivals section, since Games Plus is probably the best-stocked games store I’ve ever visited. As usual, I picked up a few magazines and the latest issues of Jolly Blackburn’s excellent Knights of the Dinner Table comic. But there was another game that caught my eye: Forbidden Lands, a boxed RPG developed by accomplished Swedish development house Fria Ligan (Free League…
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I’m still unpacking the boxes I brought home from the Fall 2017 Games Plus auction. There’s so many SF and fantasy board games being published these days that it’s impossible to keep up. But you know, I do my best. A week after the auction, I dropped by Games Plus in Mount Prospect to grab a handful of new releases I had my eye on. There in the sale bin was Dungeon Dwellers, a “cooperative card game for 2 or…
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Sword and Sorcery dominated the stage at Black Gate last month. The most popular topic in October was the new S&S magazine from industry pioneers Joseph Goodman and Howard Andrew Jones, Tales From the Magician’s Skull, which showed up twice in the Top Ten, first with a far-ranging interview with Joseph and Howard (and their undead overlord, the Talking Skull), followed by a report on the blockbuster Kickstarter that funded the first two issues. Gaming and game news were definitely popular as well….
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I’ve been fascinated by the D&D Adventure System cooperative play games, which include Temple of Elemental Evil, Castle Ravenloft, Legend of Drizzt, and Wrath of Ashardalon, because apparently they can all be used together in one giant uber map of fun. (I don’t know for sure, of course, because my copies are all still in shrinkwrap and buried in the basement, but I think that’s the general idea.) There’s been a pretty consistent drumbeat of releases in the series, including two…
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